I glanced past the man in my arms and met the man’s worried eyes. “Cynthia is missing. She was at the mall over on Princeton Street when we called Lancaster and asked him to bring her and the kids here. They can’t find her.”
Jerry didn’t say a word to me. He just got up, pulled his cell phone out, dialed, and then started barking out orders.
“Who is Cynthia?” Sparks asked.
“Lany’s mother,” I replied as I rubbed Lany’s back. “Cynthia Harris.”
Sparks blinked at me. “The Cynthia Harris, as in Lancaster and Cynthia Harris, business moguls and philanthropists? That Cynthia Harris?”
I nodded. “She’s also Jerry’s sister-in-law. Lancaster is his brother.”
“And she’s missing?”
I nodded again.
“Holy shit!” Sparks’ eyes rounded. “The whole city is going to burn down.”
Quite possibly.
Lancaster adored his grandchildren and his son, but he lived and breathed for his wife. His love for her was an inspiration into how I treated Lany. If anything happened to Cynthia, no one in the city would be safe.
“Sal, I’ve got something,” Lyn called out. “Cynthia was taken out through the service entrance by two men with masks. The put her in a white cargo van, which was driven by a third man, when they reached the loading dock. I’m tracking the van now.”
“Did you get a look at their faces?” I asked as I released Lany, jumped up, and hurried over to Lyn. “Can you identify them?”
Lyn had already been looking through traffic cams, following the white van, so he brought up a smaller window and showed two masked men forcing a very resistant Cynthia down the service hallway behind all the stores.
I quickly glanced to my side when I heard Lany whisper, “She’s alive.”
“And pissed,” I stated, seeing the fury in Cynthia’s amber-green eyes, the same eyes I looked into every night and day.
Lyn closed that screen and went back to tracking the van. “It looks like they are headed south.”
“What’s south?” Lany asked.
“Everything at this point,” Lyn replied. “It’s too early to try and pinpoint where they are going. All I can do at this point is track them.”
“Keep tracking them,” I ordered as I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Clarke. “How far out are you?”
“About ten minutes, why?” Clarke asked.
“I need you to double time it. Cynthia has been kidnapped.”
“I’ll be there in three.” Clarke hung up before I could say more.
I dialed the rest of my team one by one and ordered them to get to the estate as fast as they could, armed, geared up, and ready to go. Then I dialed Carlos and Vinnie, videoing them in the same call. “Cynthia was just kidnapped from the mall over on Princeton Street. Lyn is currently tracking her, and the two men that took her in a white van headed south from the mall in a white cargo van.”
“I’ll get Patty and head in your direction,” Vinnie stated. “You’ll need the extra hands when you go after her and the idiots that took her.”
“I’ll get my men out there looking for her,” Carlos said. “I can have a hundred extra men ready to go in the next twenty minutes. Just give the word.”
“Right now, we’re just trying to find her. We’re currently tracking the van headed south through the city. I’m just waiting for my team to get here, and then we’ll be hitting the road. Call me if you learn anything.”
“Does this have anything to do with the men you were looking for?” Carlos asked.
My eyes went to the storyboard. I squinted as I considered his question. “Quite possibly.”
In fact, most likely possible.
